More tinkering

When we first came through the sea-lock to Newry, seems like ages ago now. Kieran the lock keeper and his young assistant were handling the lines ashore ( the dock being about 25ft deep) as Kieran began to fill the lock the back suction began to force Dark Tarn towards the upstream lock gates. At this point Kieran on the bow line locked off the line and his young assistant on the stern line did.....nothing. This is exactly the opposite and wrong thing to do.

  Dark Tarn surged forward and as the bow line came as tight as a guitar string the slack stern line allowed her bow to career in towards the lock wall with an horrendous crash.

  Needless to say, Dark Tarn is incredibly strong and the only visible damage was a slight inward bend in the bow roller cheek, only about 3-4 mm but enough to prevent the roller from, well, rolling.

  It has also been driving me mad trying to think of a way to fix it, I bought a large lump hammer and hit it a lot, Zip, nada, nothing.

 I decided to use the lump hammer to hit a tapered piece of wood in between the cheeks of the roller in order to force them apart and free the roller. Didn't budge a millimetre.

Occasionally I would broach the subject with other boat owners, " you need a hydraulic jack" , they said, unfortunately they don't make 2 inch car jacks otherwise I would have bought one!

" you need a welding torch, heat it up and hit it with a hammer", we only have an arc welder on board.

  I resorted to a technique which has worked for me before, I sulked at it, occasionally glaring in its direction............that didn't work. It sat defiantly bent and firmly not rolling

After four months it's fixed! I bought a large nut and bolt, M20 if your interested. I then cut the bolt down to just under the width of the bow roller, this took two hacksaw blades to accomplish. Then with Lynnes assistance ( definitely a four hands job) the nut was run onto the bolt the whole thing placed between the cheeks of the roller and with our two biggest adjustable spanners we  unscrewed the nut back up the bolt thus expanding the 6mm steel plates of the roller cheeks. I placed a finger on the roller and it turned freely. So simple, and for a total cost of 90p.